Wish fulfillment ain’t what it used to be — maybe I should have read a little more closely through the contributors’ list before I checked out What Might Have Been: Imaginary History From Twelve Leading Historians. I’m a suck[…]

Dduk bo rak, my new friend — it’s a variant of Korean BBQ, and according to the review of Shik Do Rak in this typically brilliant Jonathan Gold column, it’s the hot new thing. And Korean BBQ itself, speaking from my ill-informed per[…]

Goth when it really meant something, or something — flipping through a French-language collection of Gustave Dore’s work, part biography and part sampling of his many efforts, led me to conclude I really need to find a good English langua[…]

So near and yet so far — growing up near the Mexican border is something that for a lot of folks automatically suggests ‘rite of passage.’ I wasn’t right ON the border but the whole idea of some other place just right nearby &[…]

CONAN THE BARBARIAN
dir John Milius
The other film I got last week besides these two was in ways a perfectly appropriate choice. On the one hand, Lucas talks on the Kurosawa disc about how it was Milius who first really got him into the Japanese dir[…]

My morning and evening bus routes
Don’t give me that look — it’s travel, it’s just travel on a low scale. And after all, I do go from one city to another, every working day. It’s a well known route, to be sure, but it […]

I was born on the road — or something close to it. As muttered elsewhere, my dad was a Navy man, and when your family has something to do with the military, one thing that’s guaranteed is that you’ll be on the move fairly often. S[…]

Next up, the Earth twins — if the results hold, looks like we’ve now found evidence of Neptune-sized planets around other stars, and predictions are more are on the way. No visual sightings of these small ones for a long time, if ever, f[…]

Leaving London — whenever I do leave London it’s always the end of whatever trip I’ve been on to Europe, wherever else I’ve been in the country or continent. It was the case the last three times, it will be again next year wh[…]

THE HIDDEN FORTRESS
dir. Akira Kurosawa
STAR WARS (original cut)
dir. George Lucas
It was all down to luck. On Thursday a friend gave me a copy of what appears to be the most elaborate (on disc) DVD bootleg I’ve yet seen, a copy of the origina[…]